SEC’s Schapiro: ‘Flash crash’ anxiety may have fueled retail investors exodus from stock market

Apple Online Store“The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission says anxiety over the ‘flash crash’ on Wall Street on May 6 may have contributed to the withdrawal of retail investors from the stock market in recent months,” The Associated Press reports.

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“SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro says the regulator has received written comments from brokerage firms saying their retail customers have pulled back from the market since the May 6 plunge,” AP reports.

“Many individual investors filed comments that are sharply critical of the current structure of the market, says Schapiro in prepared text for a speech Tuesday,” AP reports.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Excellent. Another speech will solve everything.

21 Comments

  1. And why wouldn’t we? Most don’t spend all their time watching the stock market. If you have zero assurances that this won’t happen again, how can you take the risk. The banksters were all putting their money in T-Bills. What do they know that I should? With the absolute effectiveness at identifying bad actors, willingness to create a transparent and fair stock exchange, and focus on prosecuting malfeasance demonstrated thus far by the SEC, it’s surprising that anybody holds any stock in a US listed company. We’re just waiting to have it stolen.

  2. The SEC so full of it. Together withe cftc, they are sticking it to the American public. There was no flash crash that computers caused. The so-called incident were traders (probably hedges owned by the IBs) who deliberately made the trades. The manipulation is done everyday. Look at how they have brought down apple while amazon is up. The cftc is worse since they have allowed the gouging of the consumer through the ICE and nymex casinos.

  3. What the hell has this to do with Apple.
    Drop this misguided political posturing. You are so right-wing as to turn off rather than woo the opposition to your point of view anyway. It is a complete waste of your time and mine!

  4. Swing Geezer:

    Plenty. Apple is the most manipulated stock on the market between day traders and hedge funds in addition to retail investors. Instead of the SEC spending futile efforts trying to find improprieties or insider trading in stellar companies, they’d be doing what they are there for by seeking and investigating manipulation from the above mentioned known abusers and enforcing the lwa with all it’s might against them.

    That would do a lot more for the confidence of the public in the markets and would cut down on the abusive milking of the companies and their well intentioned investors.

    SEC – Get of your lazy asses and get the real crooks.

  5. Small investors are pulling out of the stock market because it’s finally beginning to dawn on them that the game is rigged against them. Large investment banks treat the entire stock market as one big pump-and-dump scheme, buying stocks and securities and waiting for the “dumb money”, as they refer to individuals, mutual funds, and retirement accounts, to follow behind. Then they sell their holdings while shorting the very same things they were buying yesterday. They make out like bandits — you get screwed.

    The stock market is a fool’s game these days. The major players are so massive that small investors don’t have a prayer of winning a bet.

    ——RM

  6. So, the true investors are leaving the market to the opportunists who bilk them out of their money through shady trading structures and practices that contribute little if anything to the value of businesses, and contribute much, if not all to market volatility.

    I think we could do with a good bit less market liquidity, in order to gain back some control over computerized micro-trades, and other short term trades that do little if anything to provide needed capitol to industry.

  7. @Sick of hopenchange

    I agree with your nickname wholeheartedly. I was sick of it before the mistake was made in Nov. 2008. It was obvious bullshit to me and my friends then and now it is to many more people today.

    BTW: Obama sends 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan

  8. The conservative roots are virtually dead. You have to go back to Pre-Reagan to find any true conservatives. For the past 30 years the “conservatives” have embraced neo-liberal economic policies that benefit the banks, insurance companies, brokers, and short term pseudo-investors.

    I would love to see a return to true conservative roots, but the current crop of tea baggers and big mouths don’t have a clue what conservative means. My fear is that November may accelerate us down the path to destruction that Reagan started and every administration since has facilitated.

  9. The stock market is the ultimate government sanctioned PONZI Scheme. Apple’s stock price should be 300 but the market players
    keep it low because it’s the best story in town.

    I was out at 270.00 and not going back. I would rather send a check to Steve Jobs than pay another “Make Me Broker” another penny.

    Wait for this fact to sink in and then tell me about the depression
    the US is in. NO MORE SPIN, tell the truth.

  10. Every time we invest our money in Wall Street, we empower the greed and corruption. We are all mad about the SEC when it is us who is to blame. Let’s not give them any more of our money, when the bottom falls out, then Wall Street will have to listen.

    As long as we keep our 401k money in Mutual Funds where the “all boys network” does whatever they want with our money, we empower them.

    We gave them the power, it is time to take it back. For now, my 401k is “invested” in cash until I can figure out something better.
    But giving “them” control of my money is not in the plans.

    I may actually pay the penalty and cash out, but at least I then have control over my money.

    Just my thoughts.

  11. Yes, the current structure of our economy and it’s regulations has nothing whatsoever to do with the previous 8 years of deregulation and lack of oversight.

    Mind boggling that in just two years anyone can restructure a government and it’s framework so completely. One imagines that this kind of view may even be ignorant.

  12. Thanks Ms. Shapiro. You ask that the retail investor believe that you have no idea where the flash crash trades came from and yet billions of credit cards purchases are tracked so closely every day that a security program turns off my card if I buy an unusual item or from an unusual location.

    Which is worse, that you are lying or that you see no problem in a stock market system where you claim to have no idea who is making the trades that crash the markets. Retail investors now believe that if you don’t know it’s because you were told not to know.

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